D&D 5E Homebrewing Weapons guide - Help with Heavy Property wanted!

[Hillsy7]

Hi there - looking to crowd-source some ideas!

(NB: for everything onwards, I'm ignoring weight and Cost)

I've been building a heavily flavoured homebrew world for my game and I've encouraged quite a lot of reflavouring of weapons because the world design is sort of Postapocalytip Magepunk, and so people have aa way of really making their weapons part of the character without having to choose between, say, a rapier and a shortsword. Anyway, after reading a couple of threads about weapon choice and how people are dealing with it, I sort of had an idea about building simple rules so anyone can build any weapon they want (appearance wise) but keep all the weapon rules balanced.

I pulled apart the weapons table in the PHB and managed to get a simple system that works almost perfectly to recreate every weapon (Exceptions being the much maligned Trident, the Light Hammer being identical to the handaxe, and the fact that Versatile isn't applied broadly enough)

So by following these rules, you can almost exactly recreate all the weapons in the PHB
1) Start with a weapon concept.
2) pick damage type.
3) Starting at 0, add/subtract the following values.
4) Choose if it is going to be light (-0.5), versatile (0), or heavy (+1).
5) Add any of the following Positive Attributes: Light, Finesse, reach, ranged or thrown. For each one, subtract 0.5
6) Add any of the following Negative attributes: Loading, Two-Handed. Martial.
7) Double it and add 6
8) This is your new weapon dice size

So I'm happy with this as it is: Weapon concept and common sense dictate what can go together (e.g. not light & 2-handed) For the odd numbers as they come up,, round a martial weapon up, and a simple weapon down to a minimum of a d4.

An example: Player wants a LASER SCYTHE! This is Simple, Heavy, 2-handed, finesse, and has reach. That Equals (0, +1, +1, -0.5, -0.5) +1. It's a simple weapon so I round down to 6. Or a 1d6. Couldn't be simpler, right?

So here's where I need help. Everything works EXCEPT the Heavy property - It's a negative factor, like 2-handed, but it's not Negative ENOUGH. As the weapon concept is going to go hand in hand with the character concept, this negates the choice between Versatile and Heavy. You know you're not going to be playing a small race? It's always heavy. No drawbacks, no nothing.

So without inventing wild new mechanics - what can you suggest that will make choosing a Heavy weapon a meaningful dilemma?

I'm really looking forward to your ideas


Cheers!

 

[MostlyDm]

Reach is a negative attribute?

That doesn't sound right.

 

[Horwath]

I've come to similar formula. For melee weapons

Base simple damage d8

Base martial d10

finesse -1 die step

light -1 die step

2 handed +2 die step

heavy +1 die step

reach -1 die step

thrown 20/60 free if it suits the weapon

versatile free for non light non finesse one handed.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Reach is a negative attribute?

That doesn't sound right.

Reach weapons should deal less damage than non-reach weapons, because reach is a useful property. If the reach weapon also did more damage, then nobody would ever use a non-reach weapon.

Two-handed should be a positive trait, though. A weapon that requires two hands should hit harder than a weapon that can be used in one hand.

 

[Hillsy7]

Whoops.....yes I ballsed up......amended

So positive attributes reduce dice size, negative ones increase it (Heavy being a negative attribute)

 

[The Crimson Binome]

So without inventing wild new mechanics - what can you suggest that will make choosing a Heavy weapon a meaningful dilemma?

Tie Heavy to Two-Handed. You cannot have a Heavy weapon unless it also requires two hands to use.

In fact, you could further the spectrum to five weights, and make them all mutually exclusive: Light, Finesse, Versatile, Two-Handed, Heavy Two-Handed.

 

[Hillsy7]

If they are mutually exclusive then you couldn't have a finesse off hand weapon without a feat. Was that intentional?

I dabbled with keeping heavy and 2 handed, but I like the idea of a slightly beefed up on handed weapon. Like an uber mace

 

[The Crimson Binome]

If they are mutually exclusive then you couldn't have a finesse off hand weapon without a feat. Was that intentional?

Sorry, I forgot that it was possible to have a light weapon that couldn't be finessed, probably because I've never seen one actually used in-game.

So the scale I mentioned would go from "finesse and light", to "finesse", "versatile", "two-handed", then "two-handed and heavy". But you can just ignore that now, if you want non-finesse light weapons to be a thing. The important part was just that a weapon must always be two-handed before it can be heavy, for balance reasons if nothing else.

It does mean that there's no downside to adding the heavy property to any two-handed weapon you make, if you aren't playing a small race, but that's true of the base game already.

 

[Hillsy7]

I think thats cos theres only club and hand axe that are light and not finesse.......plus you dont get a huge amount of dual weilding STR builds......maybe this system might change that?

But yes.....the Heavy property is there as another descriptor to increase option design and concept......so like longsword, bastard sword , falchion, then greatsword.....all types of non light sword, but different properties....

 

[Blue]

Looking at the PHB equipment table:

For MELEE weapons, "Heavy, two-handed" is a single option. You never have one without the other.
For RANGED weapons they can be split, such as the light crossbow and the shortbow. But those are the only two exceptions.

I'd roll them together as a single modifier. Or maybe if you have small races to deal with the exceptions, I'd make two-handed the modifier, and automatically add heavy for some certain criteria.